5 Useful Cross-Browser Web Form Helpers

We have to deal with web forms and check boxes daily: to comment on any article, to subscribe to an email alerts, to fill in the contact form, etc. It is always worth looking for more and more possible ways to optimize the process.

I have already shared a few FireFox addons to recover forms. However times have changed. Nowadays more and more people use several browsers randomly and we need some cross-browser-compatible tools to cover everyone’s needs.

The browser-based tools listed in this post have only some basic functionality but they are able to make your forms more usable and friendly! Besides, these web form helpers are all very easy to install, so you can test any and decide if that’s something that could turn useful to you. Let us know!

Save and Recover Forms

1. Simple Form Fixer (Greasemonkey Userscript)

Tested on: FireFox and Google Chrome

Simple Form Fixer is a nice little userscript with huge functionality: it can save and recover almost any form. The script places a red dot in the top-left corner of any page that lets you record any form:

The icon is a red dot for web pages where there are sufficient form items to be useful for saving (If you can’t see an icon, there are no forms on the current page);

The icon is a red square with a hole on web pages where you have already saved the form information earlier.

You can actually easily get used to how it works. The icon stays within the window frame even when the page has been scrolled down.

Once you click the red dot, the script saves everything it can find: checkboxes, radio buttons, text inputs, drop down selections and text areas.

The script also changes all the checkboxes making them a bit larger and thus easier to notice (especially for elderly people or people with poor eyesight). If you don’t like that, you can disable this behavior in about:config by setting value “greasemonkey.scriptvals.userscripts.org/Simple Form Saver.fixed_sizes” to boolean true.

2. Save and Recover Forms (Bookmarklets)

Once you fill in all the forms on the current page, click the bookmarklet and give each form a name. Next time you are on page and want to recover any form, click the other bookmarklet, specify the form name and it will fill it in within a second.

Check / Uncheck Multiple Checkboxes

3. Checkbox Mate

Tested on: FireFox, Google Chrome

Checkbox Mate (based on this addon which is no longer supported) is a great userscript that allows you to select multiple checkboxes by drawing a box around them. To start drawing the box, hover over the top checkbox and drag down (the same logic works for un-checking boxes):

4. Check Boxes

Tested on: FireFox, Google Chrome

This is a very simple userscript that adds a menu on top of your screen allowing you to easily check / uncheck all the boxes located on the page:

5. Tick All / Untick All / (Un) Tick All (Bookmarklets)

Tested on: FireFox, Google Chrome, Opera

Three bookmarklets from the same author as the above two – can be installed from here

As the name suggests the three bookmarklets can be used to check / uncheck multiple boxes with one click of a mouse.

I hope these little form helpers will increase your productivity. Please share any other form productivity tips you use to easier fill in multiple web forms we have to deal with nowadays!